Longing for a national container. On the symbolic economy of Europe's new nationalism.

This paper discusses how to explain the rise of a new nationalism in Europe. It begins by problematizing the inconsistencies in the current culturalist, socio-economic, and socio-political approaches. It then makes Pierre Bourdieu's theory of social space fruitful for a sociological explanation of neonationalism by removing it from the conceptional framework of national container societies. It finally shows that the transnational opening of national societies is accompanied by profound processes of symbolic appreciation and depreciation of economic, cultural, and social 'capital' that the inhabitants of the national container possess. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]